Snapshots and Scraped Knees
by TheMetaBard
Summary: So, Naoki Irie is the untouchable cool-guy with the 200 IQ with the emotional range of saguaro cactus. Have you ever wondered how he ended up that way? A collection of one-shots about Naoki's childhood. Mostly drabble-y, fluffy type stuff with some drama sprinkled in there. Based on the live-action Love In Tokyo version. Enjoy and review pls.
1. Chapter 1

**Soooo you ever wonder like how Naoki ended up as emotionally capable as a brain dead squirrel? Because, I sure have. This will be mostly a collection of oneshots of Naoki's childhood. It will be updated occasionally. Enjoy and review pls.**

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"Okay, honey, do it again."

His face twisted around, confusion and frustration flashing in his eyes. Noriko's hand automatically went to her three-year-old son's head, smoothing out emotions before they started, hushing tears before they happened. "Why, mama?"

She glanced up at the psychologist and the pediatrician and the mathematician that sat in the identical couch across from them as they drilled him with questions. Forcing him to recall facts or do equations in his head. Every time he would answer something right, they would scratch something on their clipboards. And every time she had to subject herself and her son to the sound of pens scratching against paper, the more she wanted to pick up Naoki and storm out of the room and straight into a sweet shop where she could watch him smear ice cream all over his beautiful face and watch his big, brown eyes dance with a sugar rush.

They were being _barbaric._ They were treating him like a _lab rat._

Naoki's eyes kept wandering to toy bucket that sat in the corner of the room. He was growing bored and restless, like a three-year-old was allowed to. "I don't want to." He whined and slouched, forcing the overalls he wore up so that he looked like a turtled retreating into his shell. "I'm tired."

She looked over at the scientist sitting and then down at her watch. It was almost four. They had been here since one. "How much longer do we have?" She said. "He hasn't had a nap today and-,"

"Not much longer, Mrs. Irie." The psychologist said and pulled his glasses off of his face.

"If you do this one thing for me, I promise we can get ice cream afterwards."

He straightened on the couch. "Really?"

Noriko smoothed out his hair over his forehead and smiled down at him. "Yes, really."

"Okay," He said. "three point one four one five nine two six five three five…"

 _He was special._ That's what the other mothers would say when he could already write full sentences in kanji when the other kids were still figuring out how to hold a pencil. _He was special._ That's what his doctor said when Naoki started to lecture him on the chemical composition of amoxicillin instead of playing with the blown up latex glove like most toddlers did. _He was special._ That's what Shigeki said when he handed Naoki a toy and instead of playing pretend with it, he completely disassembled it and then put it back together again.

Noriko sighed a little at her son. He was special, but not in the way everyone else thought. All they saw was raw intelligence, a knack for memorizing and a wit that exceed his years. What they didn't see was the way his eyelashes intertwined together when he slept in the afternoon sun, or the way he chased around frogs in their backyard, beaming with pride when he caught one and held it up for her inspection. They couldn't see the way he would tangle himself up in her legs when she was trying to make dinner in the kitchen, asking questions on why the sky was blue, but the sea was green, or why flowers only bloomed in the springtime or why he had to brush his teeth twice a day but only brush his hair once.

"What's the square root of pi?"

"One point seven seven two four five three eight."

"What is the equation for acceleration."

Naoki took a deep breath in. "So, the acceleration is the change in the velocity, divided by the time. Acceleration has a magnitude and a direction. The direction of the acceleration does not have to be the same as the direction of the velocity. The units for acceleration are meters per second squared."

"Incredible," The mathematician breathed. "His IQ must be off the charts."

"You must enroll him right away in a preparatory school right away." The pediatrician nodded. "He's going to-,"

"No," Noriko cut him off. "He's not going to school until he reaches the correct age to."

The doctors looked dumbstruck. "But, you have a genius on your hands." The mathematician said.

"No, she's right." The psychologist piped up, pulling off his glasses again. "Robbing him of being a child will only do him a disservice. He is still developing."

Noriko breathed a little sigh of relief and looked down at her only son who had taken to entertaining himself by snapping his overall buckle over and over. "He needs to enjoy being a child."

"Then why are we here then?" The mathematician asked. "If you are not going to use him to his full potential."

"Because," She said. "I'm hoping to figure out where this is coming from. Shigeki is intelligent, but this is a level that goes beyond."

The doctors shifted in their seat. "Sometimes children are born gifted." The psychologist shrugged. "It is not a matter of origin, its what becomes of it."

"Will it affect him, _socially?"_

"Well, hyper-intelligence has been reported in children with high-functioning autism, but we would have to run a set of different tests for that."

Noriko could feel herself panic a little. Intelligence only got you so far in life. If he had something, a developmental disorder or something, that would prevent him from making friends or experiencing joy or _finding love._ Intelligence wasn't worth not being able to live your _life._

"We could bring him in another time if that's something you would like to discuss with your husband." The pediatrician nodded and turned his attention to her boy. "In the meantime, I think you owe somebody some ice cream."

Nariko smoothed out Naoki's hair again, trying to also smooth over the momentary anxiety. He was special. That was for sure. However, they only saw how special he _could_ be when she just wished they could see that he was absolutely perfect _right now._


	2. Chapter 2

Naoki pressed his hat so it sat snugly on his head, standing on his tippy-toes so he could look at himself in the mirror that his mom put by the genkan so she could apply lipstick before she went out. His hat was bright yellow and when it reflected the sun on clear mornings, it hurt his eyes, but his mom told him that he had to wear it or he wouldn't be allowed to go to kindergarten.

And that's all he wanted was to go to kindergarten.

He would wait with his mom when they would go out in the morning and watch all the older children walk to school with their yellow hats. He wanted one so bad. It meant that he could actually go to school and learn stuff. He wanted more stuff to learn. He had already memorized every book in his house. Even the manuals for the rice cooker and the refrigerator. He could close his eyes and see the yellowed-pages and read the words like he was staring right at them.

He tried to read the newspaper that his dad subscribed too and he liked flipping to the parts where the words changed form and turned very long and looked swirlier than his native Japanese. His mom called it 'English.' Those were the funnest. It was like a code to crack.

School had English. And math. And it had writing. Colors. And stories.

He tried to explain it to his mom all the wonders of school and all the stuff he was excied to learn as he held her hand, his backpack slapping against his tailbone as it slipped from his shoulders. She didn't really answer him, except for a "That's nice," every once in awhile.

They made it to the gate and Naoki could see the name of the school in large print above the door. "Sakura Primary School." He read.

"Naoki." He felt himself being spun around by the shoulders and came nose-to-nose with his mom. She had a worry line in the middle of her forehead and looked at him intensely, like she did when she explained that little boys are not allowed to touch bleach, even during 'science experiments.' "You are going to meet a lot of kids in there, okay?" She started. "They have different personalities and some of them can be cruel when they don't mean to be."

Naoki felt his eyebrows pull together in confusion. "But, if they don't mean it, then why do they do it?"

"Because, they don't see the world as you do and it frustrates them. You just be patient and kind, even if they don't give it back in return. And if anyone tries to give you trouble, you tell your teacher immediately."

Naoki nodded and looked at the school, a sinking feeling of knots in his stomach. The colors on the walls seemed too bright and they hurt his eyes. He played with the zipper on his coat, trying to calm himself down.

"You'll be fine, okay?" His mother said and planted a kiss on top of his yellow hat. "Go have fun."

Naoki was not having fun. There were a lot of kids that were running around and yelling and shrieking. He did not expect this many kids. He gripped the brim of his yellow hat and played with the zipper on his jacket and took in the chaos. Anxiety spiked in his chest and he heaved hard, like after he ran up and down his apartment stairs. Tears prickled his eyes.

"What's your name?" An adult with a shirt that had flowers on it approached him. _Sakura Primary School._ The flowers were too bright. Everything was too bright and he couldn't find words to speak. He continued to move his zipper up and down. This wasn't school. This wasn't _learning_. This was madness. "Are you Irie Naoki?"

He nodded and tried to look into the adult's eyes, but couldn't, but he couldn't look at her shirt because it was too bright and he couldn't look at the room because it was too chaotic, so he resorted to looking at his shoes.

"My name is Miss Kari, I'm your teacher." She said gently and squatted down. "Is everything alright?"

 _You can't see the zoo behind you?_ _The monkeys throwing stuff around and shrieking like hyenas?_ He remembered a documentary he watched about African plain animals. The classroom was no different. He inhaled a sharp breath. "It's too loud."

"What's too loud?"

 _Everything._ He pushed his zipper up and down faster and harder and fought the urge to cry.

"Let's get you settled, then." She pulled off his hat and picked up his backpack and hung it one of the many pegs behind him. "Do you want to take off your jacket?"

He shook his head no.

"It's okay." She said, her short hair waving around her chin. "You'll make friends in no time. Why don't we introduce you?" She led him over to a group of boys that were building up blocks out of a large bucket in the corner. "Ohba-chan." The boy with short, shaved hair looked up at the teacher. "This is Naoki-chan. He's new and needs a friend."

Ohba-chan smiled, showing the blank space where his two front teeth were supposed to go. "Do you like blocks?"

Naoki shrugged and sat down on his knees. _I guess this isn't too bad._

"See? Friends in no time." Miss Kari said and walked away to tend to another group of kids.

"Here," Ohba-chan threw a block at Naoki's knees. "The rest are for us."

"But-,"

"What are you, retarded or something?" Ohba-chan spun around on his butt so that his back was facing Naoki.

"But-," Naoki looked at the bucket of blocks and gripped the one at his knees. "There are at least 232 blocks in that bucket, according to the measurements of the blocks and divided by the volume of the bucket himself. That is 52 blocks per person. That's plenty to even build a semi-decent suspension bridge across the rug with the purple polka-dots on it."

All three boys looked at him like he had grown a horn out of his forehead. Naoki gripped the zipper of his jacket fought the knot in his stomach that told him that he probably should have just kept his mouth closed.

"You think you're better than us?" Ohba-chan wheeled around. "You think you're smarter than us?"

"I am, technically, smarter that you." Naoki said without realizing it. "My IQ is 200, which is almost 80-90 points above even smart average people."

Ohba-chan leaned forward so that Naoki could see that he was also missing his two front lower teeth. He wondered for a second how he bit into apples. "You're a freak."

"Freak?" Naoki's eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "But, I do not have physical abnormalities."

"What did he say?"

"I think he was calling you retarded, Ohba."

Naoki ran his zipper up and down in time with his growing heartbeats. "No, no. I was not-,"

Ohba-chan's hand flashed out and grabbed Naoki's zipper of his jacket, pulled it all the way down and then twisted it, so the zipper part broke into pieces. He dropped it on the floor and stood up. "If tell anyone I did that, I will break your face the next time. Come on guys, let's get out of here so we don't catch any _freak._ "

They boys stood up and walked off, leaving Naoki in the corner as he watched the broken zipper on the floor grow blurry with his tears.


End file.
